Paul Little explains how totally awful Nick Smith is as housing minister.
An excerpt from this excellent article .
‘In the context of the deaths of Soesa Tovo, 37, and Emma-Lita Bourne, 2, from housing-related causes, his remark that “people dying in winter of pneumonia and other illnesses is not new” took some by surprise. But for this Government, callousness on that level is not new either.’
‘It’s true people die in houses all the time but it used to be from old age and other natural causes, not because they were poor and had to endure shoddy conditions that any minister should be ashamed to know exist on his or her watch.’
Here is a major problem with the Auckland housing market:
“The average size of new houses has increased 50 per cent since 1989.”
House sizes should be decreasing rather than increasing. The quote is from Bernard Hickey’s article today in the Herald. Hickey suggests that:
“[Council].. should also lift height limits and review minimum apartment sizes once the Building Code for air quality, lighting and acoustics is updated.”
Smaller houses in denser developments is the answer to Auckland’s housing woes, not greenfield sprawl as advocated by this government.
‘Over-crowded, expensive, cold, damp and mouldy housing is estimated to be responsible for the hospital admissions of more than 1300 people with infectious diseases each year. This entrenched poverty is costing the Government at least $2 billion a year in rent subsidies and countless billions a year in health and other costs.’
Yep quite an irony that the council threatened court action about a temporary dwelling/shed in the North Shore to house a family member which is a great way to house more people in an existing situation in an affordable way, but all to happy to use ratepayers money to fight in environment court for the right to remove basic standards of Height to boundary rules for neighbours to make sure expensive McMansions are created.
Sounds great in a sound byte, make houses more intensive (supposedly to solve the housing crisis). In reality doing the opposite, it is making more large houses of 5 bedrooms and 4 bathroom McMansions which take away their poorer neighbours views, light and amenity, while at the same time removing the former house on site generally that 3 bedroom 1 bathroom family home.
Families are already having to move our of inner suburbs of Auckland because the once 1 million dollar houses are now being redesigned into 2.5 million dollars houses. They actually don’t have much outdoor space for kids, rather 3 living areas, media room, master suites the size of a 2 bedroom apartment.
Welcome to Auckland Councils Resource Consent Officers view of Auckland’s future, where the rich live in 300m2 gated McMansions and the poor in 30m2 shoeboxes!
Sounds good to have smaller apartments right, but wait look at the blocks created in the 1990’s, shoe boxes that leaked and again cost the ratepayers a lot of money, while the developers make a killing. Is it really going to solve the housing crisis to have apartments 30m2 than 35m2? I don’t think so.
It is a race to make Auckland as ugly and unliveable as possible as a speculator delight, rather than plan for quality housing and temporary reliefs.
The Persecution of Julian Assange
by JOHN PILGER, Counterpunch, November 17, 2014
The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.
The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would “actively welcome” the Swedish prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that”. The tone was impatient.
The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 – even though Swedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for Sweden and the UK. The documentary evidence of a threat to Assange’s life and freedom from the United States – should he leave the embassy – is overwhelming. On May 14 this year, US court files revealed that a “multi subject investigation” against Assange was “active and ongoing”.
Ny has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, the Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US before the European Arrest Warrant was issued.
Perhaps an explanation is that, contrary to its reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and WikiLeaks cables. In the summer of 2010, Assange had been in Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in Afghanistan – in which Sweden had forces under US command.
The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up; and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.
For his part in disclosing how US soldiers murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians, the heroic soldier Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning received a sentence of 35 years, having been held for more than a thousand days in conditions which, according to the UN Special Rapporteur, amounted to torture.
Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. Threats of capture and assassination became the currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous slur that Assange was a “cyber-terrorist”. Anyone doubting the kind of US ruthlessness he can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president’s plane last year – wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden.
According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list”. Washington’s bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is “unprecedented in scale and nature”. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has spent four years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal”. Under President Obama, more whistleblowers have been prosecuted than under all other US presidents combined. Even before the verdict was announced in the trial of Chelsea Manning, Obama had pronounced the whisletblower guilty.
“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”
There are signs that the Swedish public and legal community do not support prosecutor’s Marianne Ny’s intransigence. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”
Why won’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him?
This week, the Swedish Court of Appeal will decide whether to order Ny to hand over the SMS messages; or the matter will go to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice. In high farce, Assange’s Swedish lawyers have been allowed only to “review” the SMS messages, which they had to memorise.
One of the women’s messages makes clear that she did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him”. She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test”. She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.)
Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” That they were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident – whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga worthy of Kafka.
For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On 20 August 2010, the Swedish police opened a “rape investigation” and immediately — and unlawfully — told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for Assange’s arrest for the “rape of two women”. This was the news that went round the world.
In Washington, a smiling US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me”. Twitter accounts associated with the Pentagon described Assange as a “rapist” and a “fugitive”.
Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.” The file was closed.
Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well. She, too, was involved with the Social Democrats.
On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case. Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.” Assange’s Australian barrister, James Catlin, responded, “This is a laughing stock … it’s as if they make it up as they go along.” …..
I will make my own mind up I just felt it was a story standard readers might be interested in and thought I better put something with it. Although other points of view are handy.
Garner was frothing as he attacked Winston 2008 when Winston was being “got” by National. He really kicked him hard while he was down, figuratively of course. Campbell was accused of being leftish but Garner is fiercly biased anti-leftish.
Garner is ok. Not a Campbell. Just consider the bosses that he is working for that dealt to JC. Anyone that Gavin Ellis touts is suspect. We must have better media commentators in this country? Suggestions please, or have they all disappeared?
Depends on your political point of view. Garner hates both Labour and the Greens and has been directing Gowers attacks for the last 6 years. Add Heather DA and together they will be a huge pain in the arse during the 2017 campaign and probably kill the Lefts changes through their spin and propaganda.
Some of these media puppets need to be taken for a little ride in the back seat of a car. They need to be reminded elections are a hell of a lot more than their own egotistical ratings games.
‘Recently, the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte wrote a book, Bought Journalists, in which he reported that every significant European journalist functions as a CIA asset.’
‘Today the media throughout the Western world serves as a Propaganda Ministry for Washington. The Western media is Washington’s Ministry of Truth. ‘
thanks Tracey..this site is a goldmine for links of interest.Renegade has a short vid there by Joseph Stiglitz, imo the leading world economist about the GFC its causes and the need for regulation.
I just ran across this video of John Pilger. The video is called War by other means and explains how the rich Nations enslaved the poor ones and how this ongoing looting is killing millions and destroying our planet. But it is also very enlightening to understand how no the peripheral weaker countries in the EU and globally (New Zealand being one of those global peripheral weaker countries) are being bullied into the same eternal serfdom. It will make you understand why John Key is borrowing huge amounts of money whereas Labour was able to pay of most of our debt and how come we are being looted the way we are!
Nash actually spoke very well being interviewed and would have appealed to too a lot of Kiwi’s. By far more impressive speaker than the likes of Goff-Off, Shearer and Cosgrove. Maybe use him a bit more fresh face, new idea’s etc.
Yes, Nash did well. I only hope that this TT group will have their deliberations, ideas with integrity and sincerity and in private, and take it to the party for discussion/tweaking/endorsement or rejection rather than air all that through their PR or destabilising RW blogs and the suspect media who play dirty to harm Labour and the left.
Also, I hope this TTank will have the interests of the common people, the workers, families and the disadvantaged upper most in their thinking rather than working, directly or indirectly, primarily in the interests of the wealthy as National and ACT do, with some tokenism thrown in for the rest.
Nash actually spoke very well being interviewed and would have appealed to too a lot of Kiwi’s. By far more impressive speaker than the likes of Goff-Off, Shearer and Cosgrove. Maybe use him a bit more fresh face, new idea’s etc.
The problem can be when how something is said, is more important than the content of the speech itself. Yep those voices are part of the ‘split’ personality of Labour causing the ‘split’ vote of their former Labour voters….
I have come to the opinion as long as John Key is the leader of National they will always be the Government. Imagine if he decides to stick around for another 20 years, nah that is just not worth thinking about.
+1
Moving on some of their MP’s and blooding new talent should be a priority. At this stage I only know of Phil Goff who is off to contest the Auckland mayoralty. It’s becoming too late for 2017, let’s be real the Tories could run and win the election campaign on lambasting them for having the same tired
line up.
Yeah, and if they didn’t consult the members after the third consecutive loss, you’d say Labour don’t listen or some other destructive tosh. Just passive aggressive trolling and self serving wankery.
CV, you’re a Labour Party member. You are the party, just as every other member is. All you’re doing here by running down the LP is performing political self flagellation. It’s boring and disrespectful to the members of the party who are working to make a difference.
If you don’t like the NZLP, quit. You won’t be missed.
It was available to all members. The actual beating heart of your complaint is that nobody supported your ideas. That’s it. I don’t care that you claim to recruit, the actual damage you do here outweighs that in my opinion. You offer nothing positive. If you can’t move on and respect the efforts of others, then at least stop trolling.
As everyone’s mum used to say, apparently, ‘if you can’t say something nice, say nothing’. Trying saying something nice, CV, it won’t hurt ya.
All policies are under review after the election defeat. The process is in motion now. After that the policies will be discussed, voted in and endorsed by the party membership. It is therefore unreasonable, completely unfair and premature misrepresentation to say that ‘Labour isn’t up to presenting a serious alternative vision of NZ’.
This painting by the numbers process that Labour is following, the equivalent of British Redcoats firing volleys by ordered ranks, is utterly inadequate post 19th Century.
It is therefore unreasonable, completely unfair and premature misrepresentation to say that ‘Labour isn’t up to presenting a serious alternative vision of NZ’.
You appear to believe that revised policy detail is fundamental and critical to Labour being able to present a serious alternative vision of NZ’s future.
Bullshit. No wonder Labour keeps missing the mark wider and wider.
Sure, Rawsputin. Since you know so much, why don’t you stand as a candidate yourself? or even start a party and try to convince people to give their votes to your party, which is harder of course.
@CR
You obviously feel that overall Labour isn’t making credible noises on future policy CR. And halfway through this year there should have been some serious policy matters being discussed. Housing is important but I guess it is just catching up with the years of neglect but not looking at the new problems of climate which is affecting us now.
And reconstruction will have to be included in the Budgets from now on. Each year there will be more damage from storms etc. And presumably they won’t be remedied all in one year so we will accumulate more repair projects to add to Christchurch.That could solve our employment problems for young people, so we have a skilled competent force of practical people.
Perhaps nature’s destruction will have a positive effect.)
Q and A just a part of the neo-liberal media and they invite the neo-liberal voices in the Labour Party to speak so people only hear the neo-liberal mantra.
Haven’t you heard?
There is no alternative……..
There is no alternative……..
There is no alternative……..
There is no alternative……..
Problem is current affairs producers stacking panels and unethical attention-seekers like Farrar and Pagani accepting invitations when they have conflicted interests.
The ball is up in the air here, in my view, for any political party that genuinely supports transparency in the spending of public money, to pick up and run with?
If THIS one piece of legislation, in my considered opinion, was implemented and enforced in a thorough and proper way, across local and central government, and the judiciary – then ‘transparency’ would be transformed in New Zealand.
The name of this pivotal piece of legislation?
The Public Records Act 2005.
Because full and accurate records of the spending of public monies at local and central government are NOT being properly ‘created and maintained’ – citizens and ratepayers and taxpayers don’t know exactly where public monies are going.
Billion$ of dollars of public monies – where EXACTLY are they going?
How can the public ‘follow the dollar’ – if we don’t know where it’s going?
How many billion$ of public rates and taxes are going to private sector consultants and contractors – without any ‘cost-benefit’ analyses which PROVE that is a more ‘cost-effective’ spending of public money than ‘in house’ service provision?
How is this not ‘corporate welfare’ – on STEROIDS?
Less corporate welfare – more public money for ‘social welfare’?
Shouldn’t the public majority benefit from our public monies at local and central government level?
Not private sector consultants and contractors?
How is a double-layer of private sector ‘CONTRACTOCRACY’ – where private ‘for profit’ consultants ‘project manage’ works contractors -possibly more ‘cost-effective’ than a single layer of not-for-profit, ‘BUREAUCRACY’ – operated under the public service model?
How many private sector consultant$ helped to push the Rogernomic$ myth and mantra – ‘public is bad – private is good’ ?
Didn’t they do well!?
Pity about the majority of NZ ratepayers and taxpayers?
More experimental (in a negative way) than ground-breaking (in a postive way).
Reading down the list of predictors/indicators, it would be the height of malicious dumb for our encumbent government to use this system before addressing the things that cause the predictors/indicators. Those indicators are well know, have been for a very long time, but until recently National have denied they existed, do their best to worsen them, and still now only reluctantly talk about it.
You can’t have a National minister saying it’s ok for poorer people to die during the winter in competely avoidable housing situations – avoidable if there was a government keen to address the core issues – and then say that a high stress/condoned mortality environment is bad for their kids and it’s all the fault of people who live in an environment that is out of their direct control.
No one can justify the kind of puntive attitudes driven by National and friends against the poor, or ex-cons, or maori in general, or the mentally ill/struggling, or the unemployed, or the disabled, or transgender, or anyone else doing it hard – in fact, refering to that list, anyone with a past that doesn’t include white male middle-class privilege. Social prejudice shits on such people everyday, and now we have some ivory-tower wealthy dim-bulbs denying the pressures of society exist when it comes to finding out where those pressures are, and who drives them and why, but who also say they do exist when it comes to blaming the victim.
If the government exacerbates the kind of environment that is precurser to increased chance of child abuse, and it does, then they are enablers of child abuse themselves. So probably on that list of predictors they should add: National Party or right wing policy majority in government.
“Now wait just one moment Charles, I’m a National Party supporter, did you just call me a child abuser?”
“No I was just saying that since I am the intergalatic spokesperson for the Left throughout the known universe that you should go tell your mates that I said the Left doesn’t care about fighting child abuse.”
“Oh great, yeah, that’s what I was looking for.”
“I aim to please, even though I have a cold and my temper is really short at such times.”
As an experienced care giver I have some real concerns about this approach to identifying ‘at risk’ children in our community.
I would definitely favour an approach that ensured that all first time parents, parents in families under stress (financial, health, housing, addiction) and more than one child under two / three were guaranteed non-punitive, positive support. Access to locally based quality childcare, well health initiatives, employment and public transport would be a benefit to many in the ‘at risk’ categories.
I am a believer in proactive rather than reactive supports but the identifiers above are almost stereotypes.
In my experience, the white, middle class, closet alcoholic has done as much harm to the child(ren) in their care as the young, less well educated, brown woman in a supportive family environment does with her much loved and welcomed child(ren).
It ends up tarring everyone in the group with the same brush, and of course the touchy-feely bit of “it would be completely up to the family to decide if they want to get involved and take that extra help” would last right up until the first injured child, then it’ll be “take the ‘help’ or lose the benefit”. And the extra stress of being tagged “at risk” could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, even for families where no abuse would otherwise have occurred.
Secondly, “computer says abuse” will always overrule the social worker’s judgement, either because of laziness, over-reliance on tech, or simply that if the social worker overrules the computer and then turns out to be wrong they’ll be the scapegoat.
Thirdly, I don’t trust the benevolence of MSD, especially under the fucking nats.
But mainly, you can’t make individual predictions from macro data – most lung cancers are caused by smoking, but most smokers don’t get lung cancer, and you can’t say that a specific smoker’s lung cancer was caused by their smoking as opposed to other environmental effects.
I agree with you, but the researchers claim the model’s predictive strength is similar to that of breast screening. So the conventional medical view (and they’ll ignore the evidence re breast screening over-treatment) is that in a utilitarian sense it’s effective enough.
Benefit address changes in the last year
1=no address changes
2=1 or 2 address changes
3=3 or more address changes
4=missing
National Party solution – throw the families to the whims and wiles of the private sector who will take more of their money in rent than the state ever did, who when they can’t pay their high rents will now have large debts and poor credit history, who will have less access to support cause they are moving all the time, who will incur additional costs for moving, school uniforms etc, who will never really get to know their neighbors, who will then find it harder to get a decent rental and who will eventually end up in a grotty caravan park, sleeping in a car or homeless.
Old solution – state housing at a low cost for life
Labour solution – sell em homes at a cheap $300,000.
I worry that there’s a serious culture difference between the medical and statsnz side of this, versus the social policy side who seem gung ho about matching data without reference to basic validity or even confidentiality,
For one thing appropriating the numbers needed to treat (I don’t think it’s usually used in social policy) measure from medical research likely takes no account of the self-fulfilling prophecy problem you mentioned.
Furthermore, once implemented and generally accepted, it will only be a matter of time before algorithmic profiling is expanded to other forms of crime.
What they didn’t really get into was that even if the policing decisions are based on “unbiased” algorithms, sending a police officer increases the chances of a crime being reported and an arrest made (even if it’s just a public order arrest to stop the argument). That goes into the data for the next time, leading the computer system itself to become biased based on minute differences in the initial response choices when the system started.
It’ll be about as effective as that other great system that revolves around predicting human responses: economic forecasting. Now imagaine that instead of a 5-point drop, the result of a bad forecast is an armed officer in significant fear of their life before they even assess the situation.
As the initial Radio NZ report highlighted, the poor are more inclined to engage with state agencies, thus will have far more data gathered and stored on them, which in itself creates a bias.
Compounding this concern is the privatization thus profiteering bias of social and correctional services, coupled with court rulings also moving more towards the balance of probabilities, opposed to the automatic assumption of innocence.
For the public record, as an ‘anti-corruption / pro-transparency Public Watchdog’, in my opinion, Mayor Len Brown should have provided the trust deed for the New Auckland Council Trust, so that the public could scrutinise who were his main financial backers.
—————————————————————————————————
(Sunday Star Times 21 June 2015 Bevan Hurley)
Police investigation into $750K of secret donors stymied
Last updated 05:00 21/06/2015
A police investigation into $750,000 of anonymous donations to Auckland mayor Len Brown’s election campaign has found no evidence of wrongdoing, but were refused access to key documents.
The 16-month probe found no evidence Brown’s team had broken any laws, but they were unable to review a copy of the trust deed for the New Auckland Council Trust, meaning Brown’s secret backers will remain anonymous.
Enquiry head Detective Inspector Chris Cahill did not wish to comment further.
But in an open letter to the complainant, obtained by the Sunday Star-Times, Cahill expressed his frustrations.
“The parties concerned have at this stage elected not to provide us with a copy of any Trust Deed which may have clarified some of the issues… That is their legal right and police must accept this and as such we are not in a position to advance the questions you raise around the New Auckland Council Trust,” Cahill said.
Despite the fact police were unable to identify the trustees or any other people associated with it, the investigation shone a light into the secretive world of election finance campaigns.
It said Brown provided information to police which said he would step away as soon as supporters indicated they would be willing to donate to his campaign warchest.
“To that extent I have no idea as to whether the person followed up the inquiry with a specific offer of financial support,” the mayor told police.
Police also interviewed Brown’s former senior political advisor Conor Roberts, who said the mayor was asked to leave the room when any discussions about donations about the trust were occurring.
Roberts said a lawyer for the trust gave a ‘legal assurance’ to the police about its existence, which he said showed they had cooperated.
The investigation was launched after police received a complaint from private investigator Grace Haden about a possible breach of the filing of electoral returns.
This came after changes were made to tighten the law around donations to mayoral campaigns, so rules for the 2010 election were different from those of 2013.
In the letter, Cahill said it was clear Brown’s campaign team took legal advice and acted to ensure that the donations were outside the intended law change, which meant that they could use anonymous donations for the 2013 electoral campaign.
“The reality is the law change was too late to have a significant effect on the 2013 election but would be in force in time to ensure compliance with it for future electoral campaigns.”
Grace Haden who lodged the police complaint and stood unsuccessfully for a council ward in the last local elections, said the process lacked transparency.
“We need to know who had benefits from Len Brown being in office. Who gave the money? They’ve played the law right down to its finest line.”
The investigation had dragged on in part due to the court action against former Auckland city mayor John Banks, who was cleared of any wrongdoing over accepting legal donations.
Cahill said they did not find anything “that has led us to believe that Mr Brown had knowledge of donations that were declared as anonymous when in fact he knew who the donor was”.
“Without such information there was no legal standing for us to seek either the details of the anonymous donors or banking transactions that may identify these persons.”
A spokesman for the mayor said he had been advised that the police inquiry has been concluded, that there was no evidence to support the accusations and that no further action is being taken. “He has nothing further to add,” said the spokesman.
———————————————————————————————–
The Chancellor is reportedly hoping to reassure the banking sector and “draw a line” under increasing regulation and taxation. An aide to George Osborne told the FT last week that “There is a sense that this is a settlement” on banking regulation and added “We are in a stable position.”
With the UK economy seeing record levels of personal debt and an overheating housing market, many Positive Money supporters will be troubled by the idea of a ‘settlement’ on the structure of our banking system.
Crash the entire global economy, get let off the damage that they did and then get protected by the governments from the regulation that they obviously need.
Considering the fraud that Serco have been found to be engaging in we should be dropping their services ASAP and not looking to put more of our government services in their hands.
You heard right! They live in a goldfish bowl and have no idea what is going on around them. They think teachers are stupid without any comprehension it is they who are stupid. It would be funny of it wasn’t so sad.
Serco will always get the jobs in a “market” economy it is the wine and dine policies that ensure that they get the jobs. All those firms found out years ago that under conservative governments the way to the major job wins is via very small perks to the senior staff. Private Eye has been springing Serco for years – their record gets worse and worse but they get every contract going! And if there is ever a fraud the only ones paying the price are lowly minions. Make’s you wonder how the contracts keep rolling in!
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In 2015, then-Prime Minister John Key announced plans for a huge ocean sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands, banning fishing and mining from 15% of Aotearoa's EEZ. It was bold, it was ambitious, and it suggested that National might actually care about the environment. Except they fucked it up: Key failed ...
1. Who has just been given the accolade New Zealander of the Year?a. The Kokakob. The Cook Strait Ferryc. Fair God. Dr Jim Salinger 2. Which of these is an affront to decent society?a. Dame Edna Everageb. Mrs Doubtfire c. Dr. Frank-N-Furterd. Brian 3. Who is Penny Simmonds?a. The aspiring actress in Big ...
New Zealand’s biggest-ever political donations scandal is finally at an end. But what is the conclusion? No one can really be sure.The Court of Appeal released its judgement on Tuesday about the Serious Fraud Office case against the NZ First Foundation. On the face of it, the court found ...
Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
COMMENTARY:By Ronny Kareni Since the atrocious footage of the suffering of an indigenous Papuan man reverberates in the heart of Puncak by the brute force of Indonesia’s army in early February, shocking tactics deployed by those in power to silence critics has been unfolding. Nowhere is this more evident ...
Analysis - Nicola Willis is holding firm on tax cuts despite the economic outlook being worse than forecast and critics urging her to wait, writes Peter Wilson for The Week In Politics. ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
NONFICTION 1 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40) “It’s official,” wrote Dann nine days ago in the Herald, where he works as business editor at large, “we’re in recession.” Yeah, great. He delivered the bad stats: “GDP fell 0.1 percent in the December 2023 quarter, compared with ...
By Anneke Smith, RNZ News political reporter A petition urging the New Zealand government to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people has been tabled in the House. More than 200 people gathered on Parliament’s forecourt today and they were met by MPs from Labour, the Greens and Te ...
Pacific Media Watch The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan. She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in ...
EDITORIAL:The Jakarta Post It happens again and again; indigenous Papuans fall victim to Indonesian soldiers. This time, we have photographic evidence for the brutality, with videos on social media showing a Papuan man being tortured by a group of plainclothes men alleged to be the Indonesian Military (TNI) members. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Director of the Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy & Associate Professor, New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity A strange and eclectic range of activities takes place across these few weeks of the year. Some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University It’s Easter weekend, which means many of us will be kicking back with the greatest hits on repeat. But whether you’re a boomer, or an ‘80s or ’90s kid, you might be ...
RNZ Pacific Fiji’s Acting Public Prosecutor has filed an appeal against the sentences of former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama and suspended police chief Sitiveni Qiliho in their corruption case. Bainimarama was granted an absolute discharge for attempting to pervert the course of justice while Qiliho received a conditional discharge with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arosha Weerakoon, Senior Lecturer and General Dentist, School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland Casezy idea/Shutterstock How does toothpaste work? What did people use before toothpaste was invented? – Amelia, age 7, Meanjin (Brisbane) Thanks for your ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hallam, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney IM Imagery/Shutterstock Solar SunShot is well named. The Australian government announced today it would plough A$1 billion into bringing back solar manufacturing to Australia, boosting energy security, swapping coal and gas jobs for those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Dix, Research Fellow in Nutrition & Dietetics, The University of Queensland Easter is the time for chocolate. The shops are full of fantastically packaged and shiny chocolates in all shapes and sizes, making trips to the supermarket with children more challenging ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emma Felton, Adjunct Senior Researcher, University of South Australia Even in a stubborn cost-of-living crisis, it seems there’s one luxury most Australians won’t sacrifice – their daily cup of coffee. Coffee sales have largely remained stable, even as financial pressures have ...
Mining company Trans-Tasman Resources has unexpectedly withdrawn its application for a consent to suck the valuable metals vanadium and titanium from the Taranaki seafloor, as it apparently wagers on the Government’s new fast-track process. It had spent two-and-a-half days putting its case to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision-making committee, at ...
Contrary to the Associate Minister of Education’s claims, analysis of Healthy School Lunches Programme - Ka Ora, Ka Ako assessments has revealed it provides excellent value for the taxpayer dollar, as a groundswell of public opposition to Government ...
Greenpeace says wannabe Taranaki seabed miner Trans-Tasman Resources is likely banking on Christopher Luxon’s fast-track process to side-step proper scrutiny of its Taranaki seabed mining proposal by bailing out of the Environmental Protection Agency hearing ...
Kiwis Against Seabed mining today slammed Australian owned would-be seabed miner Trans Tasman Resources (TTR) for abandoning its application to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) to mine the seabed of the South Taranaki Bight. The company ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia Ground Picture/Shutterstock Months after COVID vaccines were introduced in 2021, governments and private organisations mandated them for various groups. Health and aged care workers were among the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dzurak, Scientia Professor Andrew Dzurak, CEO and Founder of Diraq, UNSW Sydney Diraq For decades, the pursuit of quantum computing has struggled with the need for extremely low temperatures, mere fractions of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Essential poll, conducted March 20–24 from a sample of 1,150, gave the Coalition a 50–44 lead including undecided, a reversal ...
The Taxpayers’ Union has today made a formal request under the Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on Open Government Information () for information held about how New Zealand Members of Parliament are spending taxpayer ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne A Byzantine depiction of the Eucharist in Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv.Jacek555/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA A nasty quarrel arose in the 11th century over what kind of bread should be used in holy ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Hesp, Professor, Flinders University Patrick Hesp In some parts of Australia, coastal dunes are retreating from the ocean at an alarming rate, as waves carve up the beach and wind blows the sand inland. But coastal communities are largely ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Heemsbergen, Senior Lecturer, Digital, Political, Media, Deakin University With an impressive 60% of the US smartphone market, Apple is undeniably big, but not a clear monopoly. Yet, years of innovation by Apple have effectively given the company its own exclusive ...
Whether you’re facing layoffs or are just an emotional junior staffer, it’s always a good idea to scout out a good crying place before you need it. It’s an incredibly hard time for Wellington. Across the city, thousands of public servants are hearing tough news about redundancies and layoffs. Government ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Miller-Jones, Professor, Curtin University Nuclear explosions on a neutron star feed its jets. Danielle Futselaar and Nathalie Degenaar, Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam, CC BY-SA How fast can a neutron star drive powerful jets into space? The answer, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Adair, Associate Professor of Sport Management, University of Technology Sydney Earlier this week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie accused the AFL of conducting “off the books” illicit drug testing to identify players using substances of abuse, then inappropriately withdrawing them from matches ...
The Government’s announcement that it will scrap plans for a vast marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands is ‘shameful’ and will make it impossible for Aotearoa New Zealand to meet its international commitments, says the World Wide Fund for Nature ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland Shutterstock The federal government has bowed to pressure from the car industry, announcing it will relax proposed emissions rules for utes and vans and delay enforcement of the new standards ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Suzanne Rutland, Professor Emerita, University of Sydney In his latest book, Jewish Life in Medieval Spain, Jonathan Ray focuses on the tumult of the 14th century in Spain – a time of the plague, civil strife and war between the two largest ...
While creating a slate of world-class shows, Whakaata Māori also developed a generation of world-class creatives. Television is an odd word. It mixes the Ancient Greek and Latin languages, and its most literal meaning is “far-off sight”. In the contemporary and living language of te reo Māori, “whakaata” as a ...
Yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza. This significant step and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza prompted an urgent debate in the New Zealand Parliament. Leader ...
The Government’s decision to reduce access to continuous glucose monitors (CGM) not only threatens the lives of children with type 1 diabetes and increases the potential for ‘Dead in Bed’ syndrome, but also threatens the health of their parents an ...
Apples are available year-round, but the wide variety on offer involves intensive scientific research – and large-scale commercialisation. What’s beautiful, red, sweet and crunchy? Tony Martin’s favourite kind of apple: Sassy. The CEO of apple and pear breeding organisation Prevar, Martin’s fondness for Sassy represents professional success as well as ...
Family violence specialist service Shine is calling on employers to stop asking for proof of domestic violence in order for employees to access domestic violence leave. The call comes five years after the introduction of the Domestic Violence ...
The Deputy Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is calling for public submissions on the Budget Policy Statement 2024. The Budget Policy Statement 2024 (BPS) sets out the Government's priorities for the 2024 Budget. It explains the approach ...
Brutal government spending cuts that will see the size of the Ministry for Pacific Peoples slashed by 40% will hit Pasifika communities hard, the PSA says. The Ministry has told staff that it is seeking voluntary redundancies, and to redeploy and reassign ...
I live with five people I mostly love, but our different ideas about generosity are starting to really irk me.Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzDear Hera,This is a bit of a random one but here goes. I’m 22 and work an OK job (OK meaning I get paid ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nicholas, Senior Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education, Deakin University Earlier this month, the New South Wales government announced it would roll out programs for gifted students in every public school in the state. This comes amid concerns gifted school ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Rudge, Law lecturer, University of Sydney Massachusetts General Hospital In a world first, we heard last week that US surgeons had transplanted a kidney from a gene-edited pig into a living human. News reports said the procedure was a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tombs, Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago The 5th-century Maskell panel showing Jesus in a loincloth.British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA When Jesus is shown on the cross, he is almost always depicted wearing a loincloth around ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock When you think about a red object, you might picture a red carpet, or the massive ruby in the Queen’s crown. Indeed, Western monarchies and marketing from brands such ...
COMMENTARY:Jewish Voice for Peace The UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday — and for the first time since the beginning of the Israeli military’s genocide of Palestinians, the United States abstained rather than vetoing it. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, ...
Asia Pacific Report A New Zealand investigative journalist and author says the US spy system hosted by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) appears to be a controversial intelligence system used in global capture-kill operations. Writing a commentary for RNZ News today, Nicky Hager, author of Secret Power, a 1996 ...
While Nicola Willis wouldn’t give any details on its size, she said a package of tax cuts is definitely still coming in this year’s budget, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the investigation into the Department of Internal Affairs after it was revealed that the Department’s Chief Executive personally reached out to expedite a DJs passport application. Taxpayers’ Union Campaigns ...
Finance minister Nicola Willis delivers her first budget statement, and unwittingly helps Joel MacManus save his relationship. Nicola Willis strode into the Beehive Theatrette. Around me, on the green foldout seats, were the country’s top business and political journalists. They were all here to see her announce the Budget Policy ...
Twenty years ago today, Māori Television launched after much controversy. Jamie Tahana looks back on its survival and impact across two decades. Chad Chambers stepped onto the stage, the brim of his cap casting a shadow across his face. His smile beamed as bright as his white freezing works gumboots, ...
Tauranga, Rotorua, Wellsford, Onehunga, Westhaven marina – Gavin Strawhan walks the meanish streets of New Zealand in his entertaining debut novel The Call, almost sure to roar into the number 1 position on the Nielsen bestseller chart, its front cover bearing a rave from somebody: “A really good and genuinely ...
Paul Little explains how totally awful Nick Smith is as housing minister.
An excerpt from this excellent article .
‘In the context of the deaths of Soesa Tovo, 37, and Emma-Lita Bourne, 2, from housing-related causes, his remark that “people dying in winter of pneumonia and other illnesses is not new” took some by surprise. But for this Government, callousness on that level is not new either.’
‘It’s true people die in houses all the time but it used to be from old age and other natural causes, not because they were poor and had to endure shoddy conditions that any minister should be ashamed to know exist on his or her watch.’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11468567
Here is a major problem with the Auckland housing market:
“The average size of new houses has increased 50 per cent since 1989.”
House sizes should be decreasing rather than increasing. The quote is from Bernard Hickey’s article today in the Herald. Hickey suggests that:
“[Council].. should also lift height limits and review minimum apartment sizes once the Building Code for air quality, lighting and acoustics is updated.”
Smaller houses in denser developments is the answer to Auckland’s housing woes, not greenfield sprawl as advocated by this government.
See:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11468588
And from the same article.
‘Over-crowded, expensive, cold, damp and mouldy housing is estimated to be responsible for the hospital admissions of more than 1300 people with infectious diseases each year. This entrenched poverty is costing the Government at least $2 billion a year in rent subsidies and countless billions a year in health and other costs.’
Yep quite an irony that the council threatened court action about a temporary dwelling/shed in the North Shore to house a family member which is a great way to house more people in an existing situation in an affordable way, but all to happy to use ratepayers money to fight in environment court for the right to remove basic standards of Height to boundary rules for neighbours to make sure expensive McMansions are created.
Sounds great in a sound byte, make houses more intensive (supposedly to solve the housing crisis). In reality doing the opposite, it is making more large houses of 5 bedrooms and 4 bathroom McMansions which take away their poorer neighbours views, light and amenity, while at the same time removing the former house on site generally that 3 bedroom 1 bathroom family home.
Families are already having to move our of inner suburbs of Auckland because the once 1 million dollar houses are now being redesigned into 2.5 million dollars houses. They actually don’t have much outdoor space for kids, rather 3 living areas, media room, master suites the size of a 2 bedroom apartment.
Welcome to Auckland Councils Resource Consent Officers view of Auckland’s future, where the rich live in 300m2 gated McMansions and the poor in 30m2 shoeboxes!
Sounds good to have smaller apartments right, but wait look at the blocks created in the 1990’s, shoe boxes that leaked and again cost the ratepayers a lot of money, while the developers make a killing. Is it really going to solve the housing crisis to have apartments 30m2 than 35m2? I don’t think so.
It is a race to make Auckland as ugly and unliveable as possible as a speculator delight, rather than plan for quality housing and temporary reliefs.
The Persecution of Julian Assange
by JOHN PILGER, Counterpunch, November 17, 2014
The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war.
The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would “actively welcome” the Swedish prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that”. The tone was impatient.
The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 – even though Swedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for Sweden and the UK. The documentary evidence of a threat to Assange’s life and freedom from the United States – should he leave the embassy – is overwhelming. On May 14 this year, US court files revealed that a “multi subject investigation” against Assange was “active and ongoing”.
Ny has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, the Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US before the European Arrest Warrant was issued.
Perhaps an explanation is that, contrary to its reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and WikiLeaks cables. In the summer of 2010, Assange had been in Sweden to talk about WikiLeaks revelations of the war in Afghanistan – in which Sweden had forces under US command.
The Americans are pursuing Assange because WikiLeaks exposed their epic crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale killing of tens of thousands of civilians, which they covered up; and their contempt for sovereignty and international law, as demonstrated vividly in their leaked diplomatic cables.
For his part in disclosing how US soldiers murdered Afghan and Iraqi civilians, the heroic soldier Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning received a sentence of 35 years, having been held for more than a thousand days in conditions which, according to the UN Special Rapporteur, amounted to torture.
Few doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. Threats of capture and assassination became the currency of the political extremes in the US following Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous slur that Assange was a “cyber-terrorist”. Anyone doubting the kind of US ruthlessness he can expect should remember the forcing down of the Bolivian president’s plane last year – wrongly believed to be carrying Edward Snowden.
According to documents released by Snowden, Assange is on a “Manhunt target list”. Washington’s bid to get him, say Australian diplomatic cables, is “unprecedented in scale and nature”. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has spent four years attempting to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy. The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects publishers, journalists and whistleblowers. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama lauded whistleblowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal”. Under President Obama, more whistleblowers have been prosecuted than under all other US presidents combined. Even before the verdict was announced in the trial of Chelsea Manning, Obama had pronounced the whisletblower guilty.
“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers facing Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”
There are signs that the Swedish public and legal community do not support prosecutor’s Marianne Ny’s intransigence. Once implacably hostile to Assange, the Swedish press has published headlines such as: “Go to London, for God’s sake.”
Why won’t she? More to the point, why won’t she allow the Swedish court access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the misconduct allegations? Why won’t she hand them over to Assange’s Swedish lawyers? She says she is not legally required to do so until a formal charge is laid and she has questioned him. Then, why doesn’t she question him?
This week, the Swedish Court of Appeal will decide whether to order Ny to hand over the SMS messages; or the matter will go to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice. In high farce, Assange’s Swedish lawyers have been allowed only to “review” the SMS messages, which they had to memorise.
One of the women’s messages makes clear that she did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him”. She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test”. She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. (In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.)
Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both have denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.” That they were manipulated by police and their wishes ignored is evident – whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they are victims of a saga worthy of Kafka.
For Assange, his only trial has been trial by media. On 20 August 2010, the Swedish police opened a “rape investigation” and immediately — and unlawfully — told the Stockholm tabloids that there was a warrant for Assange’s arrest for the “rape of two women”. This was the news that went round the world.
In Washington, a smiling US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that the arrest “sounds like good news to me”. Twitter accounts associated with the Pentagon described Assange as a “rapist” and a “fugitive”.
Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.” The file was closed.
Enter Claes Borgstrom, a high profile politician in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in the city of Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well. She, too, was involved with the Social Democrats.
On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered all the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case. Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed, citing one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.” Assange’s Australian barrister, James Catlin, responded, “This is a laughing stock … it’s as if they make it up as they go along.” …..
Read more…..
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/17/the-persecution-of-julian-assange/
[Morrissey, a short summary of why you think this old article is important and a link would have been better than a lengthy cut and paste. TRP]
http://i.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/69563390/Radio-host-Duncan-Garner-to-take-Campbell-Live-timeslot
Is Garner any good.?
Is Garner any good?
Why not watch for yourself and come up with your own opinion.
Too often blogs “hate” different news people simply because they believe bias. (Both left and right).
Personally if you want to be informed – watch a broad spectrum and make up your own mind.
That assumes we haven’t already realised he is a RWNJ.
I will make my own mind up I just felt it was a story standard readers might be interested in and thought I better put something with it. Although other points of view are handy.
wasn’t he in the “shearer gone within two weeks, I’ve seen the letter” camp?
Bit far off the mark for all the flecks of froth at the mouth.
Garner was frothing as he attacked Winston 2008 when Winston was being “got” by National. He really kicked him hard while he was down, figuratively of course. Campbell was accused of being leftish but Garner is fiercly biased anti-leftish.
Garner is ok. Not a Campbell. Just consider the bosses that he is working for that dealt to JC. Anyone that Gavin Ellis touts is suspect. We must have better media commentators in this country? Suggestions please, or have they all disappeared?
Depends on your political point of view. Garner hates both Labour and the Greens and has been directing Gowers attacks for the last 6 years. Add Heather DA and together they will be a huge pain in the arse during the 2017 campaign and probably kill the Lefts changes through their spin and propaganda.
Some of these media puppets need to be taken for a little ride in the back seat of a car. They need to be reminded elections are a hell of a lot more than their own egotistical ratings games.
‘Recently, the German journalist Udo Ulfkotte wrote a book, Bought Journalists, in which he reported that every significant European journalist functions as a CIA asset.’
‘Today the media throughout the Western world serves as a Propaganda Ministry for Washington. The Western media is Washington’s Ministry of Truth. ‘
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/06/19/paul-craig-roberts-address-international-conference-europeanrussian-crisis-created-washington/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udo_Ulfkotte#The_book_.22Bought_Journalists.22
Tau Henare?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/towards-a-global-military-fighting-machine-one-world-government-protected-by-a-one-world-military/5456678
People who want to stand on the moral high ground really shouldn’t suffer from vertigo…
Capill
Garrett
Craig
…
Ross Ashcroft: economics and Europe
Interview by Kim Hill on RNZ
the website is well worth the visit too
http://www.renegadeinc.com
also
http://www.debtonation.org/
thanks Tracey..this site is a goldmine for links of interest.Renegade has a short vid there by Joseph Stiglitz, imo the leading world economist about the GFC its causes and the need for regulation.
I just ran across this video of John Pilger. The video is called War by other means and explains how the rich Nations enslaved the poor ones and how this ongoing looting is killing millions and destroying our planet. But it is also very enlightening to understand how no the peripheral weaker countries in the EU and globally (New Zealand being one of those global peripheral weaker countries) are being bullied into the same eternal serfdom. It will make you understand why John Key is borrowing huge amounts of money whereas Labour was able to pay of most of our debt and how come we are being looted the way we are!
Simon “Buzz” Bridges gives electrical safety advice.
Groan just catching up with Q&A. Nash was invited on and Pagani is on the panel. Labour does have other voices …
Nash actually spoke very well being interviewed and would have appealed to too a lot of Kiwi’s. By far more impressive speaker than the likes of Goff-Off, Shearer and Cosgrove. Maybe use him a bit more fresh face, new idea’s etc.
Say again oops.
Yes, Nash did well. I only hope that this TT group will have their deliberations, ideas with integrity and sincerity and in private, and take it to the party for discussion/tweaking/endorsement or rejection rather than air all that through their PR or destabilising RW blogs and the suspect media who play dirty to harm Labour and the left.
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news/powering-up-future-labour-video-6342782
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news/energy-future-nz-power-panel-video-6342786
Also, I hope this TTank will have the interests of the common people, the workers, families and the disadvantaged upper most in their thinking rather than working, directly or indirectly, primarily in the interests of the wealthy as National and ACT do, with some tokenism thrown in for the rest.
Nash actually spoke very well being interviewed and would have appealed to too a lot of Kiwi’s. By far more impressive speaker than the likes of Goff-Off, Shearer and Cosgrove. Maybe use him a bit more fresh face, new idea’s etc.
The problem can be when how something is said, is more important than the content of the speech itself. Yep those voices are part of the ‘split’ personality of Labour causing the ‘split’ vote of their former Labour voters….
I have come to the opinion as long as John Key is the leader of National they will always be the Government. Imagine if he decides to stick around for another 20 years, nah that is just not worth thinking about.
Labour isn’t up to presenting a serious alternative vision of NZ. So National will keep winning.
+1
Moving on some of their MP’s and blooding new talent should be a priority. At this stage I only know of Phil Goff who is off to contest the Auckland mayoralty. It’s becoming too late for 2017, let’s be real the Tories could run and win the election campaign on lambasting them for having the same tired
line up.
Labour is well on the way to wasting the first full year of this new electoral cycle with navel gazing.
Yeah, and if they didn’t consult the members after the third consecutive loss, you’d say Labour don’t listen or some other destructive tosh. Just passive aggressive trolling and self serving wankery.
CV, you’re a Labour Party member. You are the party, just as every other member is. All you’re doing here by running down the LP is performing political self flagellation. It’s boring and disrespectful to the members of the party who are working to make a difference.
If you don’t like the NZLP, quit. You won’t be missed.
Actually TRP, I’m recruiting more people into the party. Enjoy.
Yes, i think a few members were consulted. Maybe 10%-20% of them.
It was available to all members. The actual beating heart of your complaint is that nobody supported your ideas. That’s it. I don’t care that you claim to recruit, the actual damage you do here outweighs that in my opinion. You offer nothing positive. If you can’t move on and respect the efforts of others, then at least stop trolling.
As everyone’s mum used to say, apparently, ‘if you can’t say something nice, say nothing’. Trying saying something nice, CV, it won’t hurt ya.
Thanks for the establishment view mate.
All policies are under review after the election defeat. The process is in motion now. After that the policies will be discussed, voted in and endorsed by the party membership. It is therefore unreasonable, completely unfair and premature misrepresentation to say that ‘Labour isn’t up to presenting a serious alternative vision of NZ’.
This painting by the numbers process that Labour is following, the equivalent of British Redcoats firing volleys by ordered ranks, is utterly inadequate post 19th Century.
You appear to believe that revised policy detail is fundamental and critical to Labour being able to present a serious alternative vision of NZ’s future.
Bullshit. No wonder Labour keeps missing the mark wider and wider.
National has the advantage for 2017.
No, you are wrong.
the very fundamentals of NZ need to be engineered, enhanced and prepared for the coming resource, energy, financial and climate crunch.
NZ Labour of today isn’t up to it, and until it is, it will never hold power for more than one term – if that.
Sure, Rawsputin. Since you know so much, why don’t you stand as a candidate yourself? or even start a party and try to convince people to give their votes to your party, which is harder of course.
not wasting my time or money on any of that.
@CR
You obviously feel that overall Labour isn’t making credible noises on future policy CR. And halfway through this year there should have been some serious policy matters being discussed. Housing is important but I guess it is just catching up with the years of neglect but not looking at the new problems of climate which is affecting us now.
And reconstruction will have to be included in the Budgets from now on. Each year there will be more damage from storms etc. And presumably they won’t be remedied all in one year so we will accumulate more repair projects to add to Christchurch.That could solve our employment problems for young people, so we have a skilled competent force of practical people.
Perhaps nature’s destruction will have a positive effect.)
That’s typical Thorndon Bubble FPP thinking, CV!
Q and A just a part of the neo-liberal media and they invite the neo-liberal voices in the Labour Party to speak so people only hear the neo-liberal mantra.
Haven’t you heard?
There is no alternative……..
There is no alternative……..
There is no alternative……..
There is no alternative……..
Problem is current affairs producers stacking panels and unethical attention-seekers like Farrar and Pagani accepting invitations when they have conflicted interests.
q & a stupid to invite Tau Henare to panel. dumb, useless. waste of space talkin head.
The ball is up in the air here, in my view, for any political party that genuinely supports transparency in the spending of public money, to pick up and run with?
If THIS one piece of legislation, in my considered opinion, was implemented and enforced in a thorough and proper way, across local and central government, and the judiciary – then ‘transparency’ would be transformed in New Zealand.
The name of this pivotal piece of legislation?
The Public Records Act 2005.
Because full and accurate records of the spending of public monies at local and central government are NOT being properly ‘created and maintained’ – citizens and ratepayers and taxpayers don’t know exactly where public monies are going.
Billion$ of dollars of public monies – where EXACTLY are they going?
How can the public ‘follow the dollar’ – if we don’t know where it’s going?
How many billion$ of public rates and taxes are going to private sector consultants and contractors – without any ‘cost-benefit’ analyses which PROVE that is a more ‘cost-effective’ spending of public money than ‘in house’ service provision?
How is this not ‘corporate welfare’ – on STEROIDS?
Less corporate welfare – more public money for ‘social welfare’?
Shouldn’t the public majority benefit from our public monies at local and central government level?
Not private sector consultants and contractors?
How is a double-layer of private sector ‘CONTRACTOCRACY’ – where private ‘for profit’ consultants ‘project manage’ works contractors -possibly more ‘cost-effective’ than a single layer of not-for-profit, ‘BUREAUCRACY’ – operated under the public service model?
How many private sector consultant$ helped to push the Rogernomic$ myth and mantra – ‘public is bad – private is good’ ?
Didn’t they do well!?
Pity about the majority of NZ ratepayers and taxpayers?
Penny Bright
http://www.pennybright4mayor.org.nz
Good report on Radio NZ this morning.
New Zealand is leading the world with ground breaking research that uses government-held data to try and stop child abuse before it happens.
But an Insight investigation has found this form of profiling is also raising questions.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/insight/audio/201758628/insight-for-21-june-2015-child-abuse-or-big-brother
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/201758628
More experimental (in a negative way) than ground-breaking (in a postive way).
Reading down the list of predictors/indicators, it would be the height of malicious dumb for our encumbent government to use this system before addressing the things that cause the predictors/indicators. Those indicators are well know, have been for a very long time, but until recently National have denied they existed, do their best to worsen them, and still now only reluctantly talk about it.
You can’t have a National minister saying it’s ok for poorer people to die during the winter in competely avoidable housing situations – avoidable if there was a government keen to address the core issues – and then say that a high stress/condoned mortality environment is bad for their kids and it’s all the fault of people who live in an environment that is out of their direct control.
No one can justify the kind of puntive attitudes driven by National and friends against the poor, or ex-cons, or maori in general, or the mentally ill/struggling, or the unemployed, or the disabled, or transgender, or anyone else doing it hard – in fact, refering to that list, anyone with a past that doesn’t include white male middle-class privilege. Social prejudice shits on such people everyday, and now we have some ivory-tower wealthy dim-bulbs denying the pressures of society exist when it comes to finding out where those pressures are, and who drives them and why, but who also say they do exist when it comes to blaming the victim.
If the government exacerbates the kind of environment that is precurser to increased chance of child abuse, and it does, then they are enablers of child abuse themselves. So probably on that list of predictors they should add: National Party or right wing policy majority in government.
“Now wait just one moment Charles, I’m a National Party supporter, did you just call me a child abuser?”
“No I was just saying that since I am the intergalatic spokesperson for the Left throughout the known universe that you should go tell your mates that I said the Left doesn’t care about fighting child abuse.”
“Oh great, yeah, that’s what I was looking for.”
“I aim to please, even though I have a cold and my temper is really short at such times.”
“I am lucky to have escaped so easily then?”
“Pretty much.”
As an experienced care giver I have some real concerns about this approach to identifying ‘at risk’ children in our community.
I would definitely favour an approach that ensured that all first time parents, parents in families under stress (financial, health, housing, addiction) and more than one child under two / three were guaranteed non-punitive, positive support. Access to locally based quality childcare, well health initiatives, employment and public transport would be a benefit to many in the ‘at risk’ categories.
I am a believer in proactive rather than reactive supports but the identifiers above are almost stereotypes.
In my experience, the white, middle class, closet alcoholic has done as much harm to the child(ren) in their care as the young, less well educated, brown woman in a supportive family environment does with her much loved and welcomed child(ren).
I have massive reservations about this.
It ends up tarring everyone in the group with the same brush, and of course the touchy-feely bit of “it would be completely up to the family to decide if they want to get involved and take that extra help” would last right up until the first injured child, then it’ll be “take the ‘help’ or lose the benefit”. And the extra stress of being tagged “at risk” could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, even for families where no abuse would otherwise have occurred.
Secondly, “computer says abuse” will always overrule the social worker’s judgement, either because of laziness, over-reliance on tech, or simply that if the social worker overrules the computer and then turns out to be wrong they’ll be the scapegoat.
Thirdly, I don’t trust the benevolence of MSD, especially under the fucking nats.
But mainly, you can’t make individual predictions from macro data – most lung cancers are caused by smoking, but most smokers don’t get lung cancer, and you can’t say that a specific smoker’s lung cancer was caused by their smoking as opposed to other environmental effects.
I agree with you, but the researchers claim the model’s predictive strength is similar to that of breast screening. So the conventional medical view (and they’ll ignore the evidence re breast screening over-treatment) is that in a utilitarian sense it’s effective enough.
Pre-crime.
Valuable input, that. All social policy can be fully expressed in a short hollywood reference. 🙄
Everything you need to know in 145 minutes
No. But it might be everything you can handle.
Lets take just one of those indicators:
Benefit address changes in the last year
1=no address changes
2=1 or 2 address changes
3=3 or more address changes
4=missing
National Party solution – throw the families to the whims and wiles of the private sector who will take more of their money in rent than the state ever did, who when they can’t pay their high rents will now have large debts and poor credit history, who will have less access to support cause they are moving all the time, who will incur additional costs for moving, school uniforms etc, who will never really get to know their neighbors, who will then find it harder to get a decent rental and who will eventually end up in a grotty caravan park, sleeping in a car or homeless.
Old solution – state housing at a low cost for life
Labour solution – sell em homes at a cheap $300,000.
Yeah.
I worry that there’s a serious culture difference between the medical and statsnz side of this, versus the social policy side who seem gung ho about matching data without reference to basic validity or even confidentiality,
For one thing appropriating the numbers needed to treat (I don’t think it’s usually used in social policy) measure from medical research likely takes no account of the self-fulfilling prophecy problem you mentioned.
I largely share your reservations.
Furthermore, once implemented and generally accepted, it will only be a matter of time before algorithmic profiling is expanded to other forms of crime.
Big data scours public records to predict crime
https://youtu.be/Su9H9QtyMmc
What they didn’t really get into was that even if the policing decisions are based on “unbiased” algorithms, sending a police officer increases the chances of a crime being reported and an arrest made (even if it’s just a public order arrest to stop the argument). That goes into the data for the next time, leading the computer system itself to become biased based on minute differences in the initial response choices when the system started.
It’ll be about as effective as that other great system that revolves around predicting human responses: economic forecasting. Now imagaine that instead of a 5-point drop, the result of a bad forecast is an armed officer in significant fear of their life before they even assess the situation.
The magnitude of concern is large.
As the initial Radio NZ report highlighted, the poor are more inclined to engage with state agencies, thus will have far more data gathered and stored on them, which in itself creates a bias.
Compounding this concern is the privatization thus profiteering bias of social and correctional services, coupled with court rulings also moving more towards the balance of probabilities, opposed to the automatic assumption of innocence.
For the public record, as an ‘anti-corruption / pro-transparency Public Watchdog’, in my opinion, Mayor Len Brown should have provided the trust deed for the New Auckland Council Trust, so that the public could scrutinise who were his main financial backers.
—————————————————————————————————
(Sunday Star Times 21 June 2015 Bevan Hurley)
Police investigation into $750K of secret donors stymied
Last updated 05:00 21/06/2015
A police investigation into $750,000 of anonymous donations to Auckland mayor Len Brown’s election campaign has found no evidence of wrongdoing, but were refused access to key documents.
The 16-month probe found no evidence Brown’s team had broken any laws, but they were unable to review a copy of the trust deed for the New Auckland Council Trust, meaning Brown’s secret backers will remain anonymous.
Enquiry head Detective Inspector Chris Cahill did not wish to comment further.
But in an open letter to the complainant, obtained by the Sunday Star-Times, Cahill expressed his frustrations.
“The parties concerned have at this stage elected not to provide us with a copy of any Trust Deed which may have clarified some of the issues… That is their legal right and police must accept this and as such we are not in a position to advance the questions you raise around the New Auckland Council Trust,” Cahill said.
Despite the fact police were unable to identify the trustees or any other people associated with it, the investigation shone a light into the secretive world of election finance campaigns.
It said Brown provided information to police which said he would step away as soon as supporters indicated they would be willing to donate to his campaign warchest.
“To that extent I have no idea as to whether the person followed up the inquiry with a specific offer of financial support,” the mayor told police.
Police also interviewed Brown’s former senior political advisor Conor Roberts, who said the mayor was asked to leave the room when any discussions about donations about the trust were occurring.
Roberts said a lawyer for the trust gave a ‘legal assurance’ to the police about its existence, which he said showed they had cooperated.
The investigation was launched after police received a complaint from private investigator Grace Haden about a possible breach of the filing of electoral returns.
This came after changes were made to tighten the law around donations to mayoral campaigns, so rules for the 2010 election were different from those of 2013.
In the letter, Cahill said it was clear Brown’s campaign team took legal advice and acted to ensure that the donations were outside the intended law change, which meant that they could use anonymous donations for the 2013 electoral campaign.
“The reality is the law change was too late to have a significant effect on the 2013 election but would be in force in time to ensure compliance with it for future electoral campaigns.”
Grace Haden who lodged the police complaint and stood unsuccessfully for a council ward in the last local elections, said the process lacked transparency.
“We need to know who had benefits from Len Brown being in office. Who gave the money? They’ve played the law right down to its finest line.”
The investigation had dragged on in part due to the court action against former Auckland city mayor John Banks, who was cleared of any wrongdoing over accepting legal donations.
Cahill said they did not find anything “that has led us to believe that Mr Brown had knowledge of donations that were declared as anonymous when in fact he knew who the donor was”.
“Without such information there was no legal standing for us to seek either the details of the anonymous donors or banking transactions that may identify these persons.”
A spokesman for the mayor said he had been advised that the police inquiry has been concluded, that there was no evidence to support the accusations and that no further action is being taken. “He has nothing further to add,” said the spokesman.
———————————————————————————————–
Penny Bright
http://www.pennybright4mayor.org.nz
‘What they really need is not equal treatment, but different treatment to achieve equality”.
https://twitter.com/kimbo_news/status/612435131450527746
Douglas Carswell: Time To Rein in the Banks’ ability to create credit
Crash the entire global economy, get let off the damage that they did and then get protected by the governments from the regulation that they obviously need.
This reining in of the banks needs to happen ASAP else they will continue to be the people who are the real spongers.
I just heard Tolley citing National Standards as a “model” for the social bond measurements.
Or I think I did.
Yikes
http://i.stuff.co.nz/national/69571439/Ministry-of-Social-Developments-spending-wasteful-Labour
Serco lining up
Considering the fraud that Serco have been found to be engaging in we should be dropping their services ASAP and not looking to put more of our government services in their hands.
Morgan Godfery on the idea
You heard right! They live in a goldfish bowl and have no idea what is going on around them. They think teachers are stupid without any comprehension it is they who are stupid. It would be funny of it wasn’t so sad.
Neetflux: SmithCity 2015
Serco will always get the jobs in a “market” economy it is the wine and dine policies that ensure that they get the jobs. All those firms found out years ago that under conservative governments the way to the major job wins is via very small perks to the senior staff. Private Eye has been springing Serco for years – their record gets worse and worse but they get every contract going! And if there is ever a fraud the only ones paying the price are lowly minions. Make’s you wonder how the contracts keep rolling in!